She asked how many students knew someone who smoked and almost every hand in the room shot up.
To illustrate their point about the dangers of smoking, the duo hooked a pig lung up to an air pump to demonstrate a healthy lung. They also brought several photos, a model with a smoker and nonsmoker’s lung and a slide show of detailed photos of what smoking does to the body.
Several students shuddered at the graphic pictures.
A few students said they felt sick after seeing a picture of an amputated foot that was lost because arteries and blood vessels pumping blood to the appendage were destroyed from the chemicals in the smoker’s cigarettes.
“I had no idea that smoking could do that,” Adrian Protzman said. “Especially to your feet and your brain.”
“Smoking affects much more than your lungs,” Crumrine said to the group. “We see this all the time in the hospital. Usually, by the time a smoker finds out they have something seriously wrong with their body, it has spread to other areas.”
They also used a “smoking box” to demonstrate how much smoke and tar is released from one cigarette.
“Yuck,” Jordan Ryan said. “That’s really gross.”
As the students walked out of the cafeteria, many commented on how they wanted to call their parents and other loved ones to tell them what they had learned and encourage them to stop.
“We hear that a lot after these presentations,” Crumrine said. “At this age, you have to give them all the information you can to prepare them and hope that the information is enough to keep them from smoking.”